Sleepless in Seattle
by elixia13
Summary: St. Elsewhere fic - Jack finds himself in a place of quiet after his rape during the prison riot.


Sleepless in Seattle

WARNING: Reference to rape (canon) and a past slash relationship (Jack/Peter)

----

It feels good to walk, Jack thought, despite the persistent pull of the stitches still healing between his legs. He enjoyed the feel of the cool night air that blew off the Pacific, even now, even in the middle of summer. There were reasons to love being in Washington State, especially since thoughts of Boston were such a nightmare.

A nightmare...

Jack squelched the thought and kept walking, needing to feel the ground slip by beneath his feet, needing to know that he could keep moving, nothing holding him back.

Holding him down...

Fuck. He stopped mid-step and ran his hands over his face for a moment before continuing down the street. _I wish Peter were here._

He stopped again and looked around, as if wondering where that thought had come from. Work had been so busy that he'd managed not to think of Peter very often. And now, of all times? Maybe it was the slight pain pulling with each step.

But Peter had never hurt him this bad, not even the first time.

_I won't think about that_, Jack decided. He didn't want to think about Wendy either, or Cathy. It was still impossible to believe that Peter had done that to them, that he had...

Held him down, a prison-rough hand over his mouth, bending him over the exam table, another hand ripping at his scrub pants, the tie giving way, cold air and then heat, hot, pain, pain, pain...

No. No, Peter hadn't been like that. He'd had women whenever he wanted them, and he'd had Jack.

Had Jack in the supply room, once, leaning over a shelf of clean, folded sheets, quick and hard, his cock slicked by hand lotion borrowed from the nurse's station. And it had hurt, sharp and sudden, but then later, when he had to talk to Westphall he'd felt Peter's strength inside him, making him stand a little straighter, talk a little louder.

And it hadn't been love between them. He wasn't so foolish as to think that Peter had loved him, but it had been good. A quick jolt of pleasure to remind him that he was alive, even if Nina wasn't. The warm, heavy pressure of Peter behind him, his low voice mumbling about the virtues of the company of men.

Peter had been a couple of inches shorter, but so much wider. Strong and solid, almost stocky in comparison to Jack's tall, reed-thin form.

And the prisoner was shorter than Peter. Wiry. But the gleam in his eye and off the blade of the knife. Hot, foul breath. Strong, steel arms. The metal of the exam table cold against his stomach. The horrible screams of the nurse and her even more terrible silence.

Jack had found the silence, too, eventually. And it had been a good place, compared to the place of the screams. He slipped into the silence, and it carried him along. He emerged from the silence to find himself at the hospital, at St. Eligius, and for a moment he thought he must have simply fallen asleep while on call. Until he'd moved and felt the pain ripping him apart again.

Until he noticed the way everyone looked at him.

He'd tried to hang onto the silence, letting it guide him along, onto the plane Westphall took him to. Westphall had given him drugs, and they made him too exhausted to bother shifting in the hard airplane seat. The silence bore him off of the plane and through the airport to his father's car, where he sat, feeling very much as he had years ago, when he'd been beaten by a bully in junior high. His father had come to take him home from school, and Jack had ridden home quietly, holding a tissue to his bleeding nose, feeling vaguely like a disappointment.

Years later, a grown man, a doctor, his own son strapped into the back seat, he still sat there and felt his father not looking at him, felt himself wondering if this could possibly be the same car or if it was merely similar.

The silence followed him into his parents' house and lay in the narrow bed with him, taking up far less room than Peter would have, holding him down as relentlessly as the prisoner had. He'd lain with the silence for two days, eating the food his mother gave him, unable to look at his son when she brought him into the silent room, unable to sleep, fearing nightmares.

On the evening of the second day, he sat up and, when his body didn't protest too loudly, stood up, looking around through the deepening gloom. He dressed and gingerly bent over to tie his shoelaces. He knew he should look in the mirror and comb through his hair, his curls most likely frizzed and flattened, but he turned away from the mirror, turned towards the door and walked down the stairs.

He opened the door and stepped out onto the street, not hearing his mother calling behind him. He walked until the darkness fell heavy and thick, lit by streetlights and porch lights, until the slight chill made it easier to breathe again. He walked until he became aware of the sound of his own footfalls.

And then he stood still and realized that the silence had left him, that he had traveled back into the world of sound. He heard loud music blaring from a car passing by, a dog barking down the block, the alarm siren in the prison, the sound of running feet, the clatter of instruments as they fell to the tiled floor, Peter's low grunts of pleasure, the squeak of the springs below the cot in the on-call room, his own rough breathing against the mattress, his own cries echoing off the cinder-block walls of the prison infirmary.

Steadying himself against a lamp post, Jack stood and breathed, pushing back all the sounds he didn't want to hear, focusing on the hum of traffic from the intersection a few blocks away. Finally, he turned and headed back towards home. A light rain began to fall, and he felt the droplets clinging to his hair, soaking into his clothes, and slicking his exposed skin. It felt good, he thought, and he realized that he needed a shower.

He stepped back into the house, glad to find the door unlocked, and realized that he could hear the TV in another room. He thought about going in to speak to his parents, but decided that morning would be soon enough to travel that far beyond the silence. Instead, he climbed the stairs and walked into the room where his son slept, his small, peaceful form bundled under the blanket.

He picked the boy up and held him to his chest, swaying slightly and thinking of Nina, the softness of women, the warmth of their company. Enjoying, for a moment, the warmth of the child in his arms. Laying the snuggling child back down before he could wake up, Jack walked into his own room, the room where he'd grown and dreamt and studied for his SAT's.

He closed his eyes and listened to the ambient sound in the quiet room: the hum and click of the ceiling fan, the tick of the alarm clock on his bed-side table, the light rain still falling against the windows. He slept.

The End


End file.
